How can I hash a password in Java?

Question

I need to hash passwords for storage in a database. How can I do this in Java?

I was hoping to take the plain text password, add a random salt, then store the salt a

Answer 1

You can comput hashes using MessageDigest, but this is wrong in terms of security. Hashes are not to be used for storing passwords, as they are easily breakable.

You should use another algorithm like bcrypt, PBKDF2 and scrypt to store you passwords. See here.

Answer 2

In addition to bcrypt and PBKDF2 mentioned in other answers, I would recommend looking at scrypt

MD5 and SHA-1 are not recommended as they are relatively fast thus using "rent per hour" distributed computing (e.g. EC2) or a modern high end GPU one can "crack" passwords using brute force / dictionary attacks in relatively low costs and reasonable time.

If you must use them, then at least iterate the algorithm a predefined significant amount of times (1000+).

• See here for more: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/211/how-to-securely-hash-passwords

• And here: http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/ (criticizes SHA family, MD5 etc for password hashing purposes)

• And here: http://www.unlimitednovelty.com/2012/03/dont-use-bcrypt.html (criticizes bcrypt and recommends scrypt and PBKDF2)

Answer 3

Fully agree with Erickson that PBKDF2 is the answer.

If you don't have that option, or only need to use a hash, Apache Commons DigestUtils is much easier than getting JCE code right: https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-codec/apidocs/org/apache/commons/codec/digest/DigestUtils.html

If you use a hash, go with sha256 or sha512. This page has good recommendations on password handling and hashing (note it doesn't recommend hashing for password handling): http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2009-06-11-cryptographic-right-answers.html

Answer 4

You could use Spring Security Crypto (has only 2 optional compile dependencies), which supports PBKDF2, BCrypt, SCrypt and Argon2 password encryption.

Argon2PasswordEncoder argon2PasswordEncoder = new Argon2PasswordEncoder();
String aCryptedPassword = argon2PasswordEncoder.encode("password");
boolean passwordIsValid = argon2PasswordEncoder.matches("password", aCryptedPassword);

SCryptPasswordEncoder sCryptPasswordEncoder = new SCryptPasswordEncoder();
String sCryptedPassword = sCryptPasswordEncoder.encode("password");
boolean passwordIsValid = sCryptPasswordEncoder.matches("password", sCryptedPassword);

BCryptPasswordEncoder bCryptPasswordEncoder = new BCryptPasswordEncoder();
String bCryptedPassword = bCryptPasswordEncoder.encode("password");
boolean passwordIsValid = bCryptPasswordEncoder.matches("password", bCryptedPassword);

Pbkdf2PasswordEncoder pbkdf2PasswordEncoder = new Pbkdf2PasswordEncoder();
String pbkdf2CryptedPassword = pbkdf2PasswordEncoder.encode("password");
boolean passwordIsValid = pbkdf2PasswordEncoder.matches("password", pbkdf2CryptedPassword);

Answer 5

While the NIST recommendation PBKDF2 has already been mentioned, I'd like to point out that there was a public password hashing competition that ran from 2013 to 2015. In the end, Argon2 was chosen as the recommended password hashing function.

There is a fairly well adopted Java binding for the original (native C) library that you can use.

In the average use-case, I don't think it does matter from a security perspective if you choose PBKDF2 over Argon2 or vice-versa. If you have strong security requirements, I recommend considering Argon2 in your evaluation.

For further information on the security of password hashing functions see security.se.

Answer 6

You can actually use a facility built in to the Java runtime to do this. The SunJCE in Java 6 supports PBKDF2, which is a good algorithm to use for password hashing.

byte[] salt = new byte[16];
random.nextBytes(salt);
KeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec("password".toCharArray(), salt, 65536, 128);
SecretKeyFactory f = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance("PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1");
byte[] hash = f.generateSecret(spec).getEncoded();
Base64.Encoder enc = Base64.getEncoder();
System.out.printf("salt: %s%n", enc.encodeToString(salt));
System.out.printf("hash: %s%n", enc.encodeToString(hash));

Here's a utility class that you can use for PBKDF2 password authentication:

import java.security.NoSuchAlgorithmException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.security.spec.InvalidKeySpecException;
import java.security.spec.KeySpec;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Base64;
import java.util.regex.Matcher;
import java.util.regex.Pattern;

import javax.crypto.SecretKeyFactory;
import javax.crypto.spec.PBEKeySpec;

/**
 * Hash passwords for storage, and test passwords against password tokens.
 * 
 * Instances of this class can be used concurrently by multiple threads.
 *  
 * @author erickson
 * @see <a href="http://stackoverflow.com/a/2861125/3474">StackOverflow</a>
 */
public final class PasswordAuthentication
{

  /**
   * Each token produced by this class uses this identifier as a prefix.
   */
  public static final String ID = "$31$";

  /**
   * The minimum recommended cost, used by default
   */
  public static final int DEFAULT_COST = 16;

  private static final String ALGORITHM = "PBKDF2WithHmacSHA1";

  private static final int SIZE = 128;

  private static final Pattern layout = Pattern.compile("\\$31\\$(\\d\\d?)\\$(.{43})");

  private final SecureRandom random;

  private final int cost;

  public PasswordAuthentication()
  {
    this(DEFAULT_COST);
  }

  /**
   * Create a password manager with a specified cost
   * 
   * @param cost the exponential computational cost of hashing a password, 0 to 30
   */
  public PasswordAuthentication(int cost)
  {
    iterations(cost); /* Validate cost */
    this.cost = cost;
    this.random = new SecureRandom();
  }

  private static int iterations(int cost)
  {
    if ((cost < 0) || (cost > 30))
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("cost: " + cost);
    return 1 << cost;
  }

  /**
   * Hash a password for storage.
   * 
   * @return a secure authentication token to be stored for later authentication 
   */
  public String hash(char[] password)
  {
    byte[] salt = new byte[SIZE / 8];
    random.nextBytes(salt);
    byte[] dk = pbkdf2(password, salt, 1 << cost);
    byte[] hash = new byte[salt.length + dk.length];
    System.arraycopy(salt, 0, hash, 0, salt.length);
    System.arraycopy(dk, 0, hash, salt.length, dk.length);
    Base64.Encoder enc = Base64.getUrlEncoder().withoutPadding();
    return ID + cost + '$' + enc.encodeToString(hash);
  }

  /**
   * Authenticate with a password and a stored password token.
   * 
   * @return true if the password and token match
   */
  public boolean authenticate(char[] password, String token)
  {
    Matcher m = layout.matcher(token);
    if (!m.matches())
      throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid token format");
    int iterations = iterations(Integer.parseInt(m.group(1)));
    byte[] hash = Base64.getUrlDecoder().decode(m.group(2));
    byte[] salt = Arrays.copyOfRange(hash, 0, SIZE / 8);
    byte[] check = pbkdf2(password, salt, iterations);
    int zero = 0;
    for (int idx = 0; idx < check.length; ++idx)
      zero |= hash[salt.length + idx] ^ check[idx];
    return zero == 0;
  }

  private static byte[] pbkdf2(char[] password, byte[] salt, int iterations)
  {
    KeySpec spec = new PBEKeySpec(password, salt, iterations, SIZE);
    try {
      SecretKeyFactory f = SecretKeyFactory.getInstance(ALGORITHM);
      return f.generateSecret(spec).getEncoded();
    }
    catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException ex) {
      throw new IllegalStateException("Missing algorithm: " + ALGORITHM, ex);
    }
    catch (InvalidKeySpecException ex) {
      throw new IllegalStateException("Invalid SecretKeyFactory", ex);
    }
  }

  /**
   * Hash a password in an immutable {@code String}. 
   * 
   * <p>Passwords should be stored in a {@code char[]} so that it can be filled 
   * with zeros after use instead of lingering on the heap and elsewhere.
   * 
   * @deprecated Use {@link #hash(char[])} instead
   */
  @Deprecated
  public String hash(String password)
  {
    return hash(password.toCharArray());
  }

  /**
   * Authenticate with a password in an immutable {@code String} and a stored 
   * password token. 
   * 
   * @deprecated Use {@link #authenticate(char[],String)} instead.
   * @see #hash(String)
   */
  @Deprecated
  public boolean authenticate(String password, String token)
  {
    return authenticate(password.toCharArray(), token);
  }

}